Prediction of the collapse point of overloaded materials by monitoring energy emissions

A bundle of many fibers with stochastically distributed breaking thresholds is considered as a model of composite materials. The fibers are assumed to share the load equally, and to obey Hookean elasticity up to the breaking point. The bundle is slightly overloaded, which leads to complete failure. We study the properties of emission bursts in which an amount of energy $E$ is released. The analysis shows that the size of the energy bursts has a minimum when the system is half-way from the collapse point.